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THE NEW NOVEL
WHAT is the new novel to be? In retrospect from another generation this phenomenon may not seem, after all, so different from its forerunners as contemporary self-consciousness would like us to believe. Time has a leveling way with all human accom¬plishments, even those done in the pure ether of art, and the surviving landmarks often seem to have little relation with the intervening valleys, however noisily these were once in¬habited. The increasing preoccupa¬tion with the novel in our days and its voluminous and multifarious pro¬duction may be due less to a renewed or undiscovered vitality in the form itself than to a growing realization of its adaptability to the needs of a crowded and self-conscious civiliza¬tion. For it is beyond dispute that the novel has taken its place with the cin¬ema and the newspaper in the vast cultural and interpretative effort of our world. That it is discovering within its flexible form new possibil¬ities for the exploitation of new fields promises little for its present or future performance. It is the easiest and simplest weapon of self-revelation for a democratic society (however diffi¬cult and toilsome the complete mas¬tery of its art is) and in its deepest essence must remain always autobio¬graphical, and hence universally alluring. . . . During the late century the novel oscillated outwardly between the rival camps of Realism and Romance. The long, inconclusive battle of the critics which somewhat languidly animated the intellectual life of the late nine¬teenth century was largely concerned with the defence and the attack of these two metaphysical unrealities, and it was not until the century mark was safely rounded that we began to real- ize that the prolonged battle about realism and romance, like all vehe¬ment conflicts, had been waged in a fog of misunderstanding for an im¬practical victory. Neither side of the controversy had an exclusive posses¬sion of the truth, for neither ideal ex¬isted except in the partisan imagina¬tion of the theorist, and the sturdier practitioners of the art dodged back and forth between the embattled camps—as they always have done and always will do. For realism and ro¬mance represent, verbally, nothing more than two persistent moods of hu¬manity, under which it surveys itself and the universe intermittently, not mutually exclusive, and together not completely occupying the ample terri¬tory of the human spirit. Consistent realism can be found only in the work of inferior and unimaginative artists, because they are more easily satisfied with surfaces, and a world of surfaces is the nearest approach to the absolute in a subjective universe. Conversely it may be said that consistent romance easily becomes nonsense, and human beings striving on the whole for the use of their intelligence quickly sur¬feit with undiluted romance. That is what happened exactly at the end of the last century when, in this country especially, a new and uneducated reading public avid for simple imag¬inative excitement boosted the sales of flimsy romantic novels to unheard of figures, then overnight rejected its passion. With the snuffing out of this unsub¬stantial romance, the way was cleared for better things (not that the cream- puff "line" of romance has wholly dis¬appeared or ever will lack favor in a world so largely composed of naive people, but the flavors have been changed, and the more earnest crafts¬men no longer supply the market for this kind of goods). The younger and more serious minded writers having given over the concoction of saccha¬rine toys for the popular taste, ignor ing the tiresome debates of the critics, went out for fresh adventure, and here it was that for nearly a genera¬tion England led the way. There be¬gan a period of interesting experi¬mentation, which pushed the novel into untried fields and carried it for good and all beyond that futile con¬troversy of realism and romance. Novelists forgot their old preoccupa¬tions, as to what could and could not be done in fiction, what the public would and would not "stand for." They have found that the scope of the novel can be indefinitely stretched to include new matters and new meth¬ods and that the reading public will take—that is some part of it will take —whatever gives promise of novelty or a fresh perception of the old. Even dullness! For the ancient truth that the dull and the commonplace belong properly to life and can even be en¬dured in literature when intelligently presented has also been rediscovered. Under the exhilarating leadership of Mr. Wells the new English novel as¬sumed much of the kaleidoscopic vari¬ety of the newspaper and tried to teach the reader to think, at least to consider many hitherto unfamiliar subjects. It also acquired, at many hands, a new frankness about human sexuality, or perhaps merely lost a puritan reticence of expression on pri¬vate matters which had been tempo¬rarily imposed upon it by public man¬ners. Finally it began a search of the Freudean caves for fresh motives and new thrills. Incidentally it had ac¬quired from the glib interpretation of those opulent years just before the war, many of the European tricks of craftsmanship that had heretofore been concealed from the Anglo-Saxon by the veil of a foreign language. In short the novelist's art had become, like morals, thoroughly eclectic and individual, choosing its methods and its materials where it found anything to its purpose, often whimsically. With this surprising wealth of plun der both in matter and form, it re¬mains to be said in all honesty that this period had no great master of the prose epic,—no Tolstoy,. no Zola, no Hardy—nor even a Meredith, and the master ironist of the period was a Frenchman and his effulgence was that of a splendid and lingering with¬drawal. Thus, then, to the period set for all things by the war. Since the war the novel, at least the more vivid interest in its possibilities, has come to this side of the Atlantic. For although ex¬perimentation still goes on in Eng¬land, more especially among the younger women novelists, the triumph of arresting accomplishment seems for the moment quite departed. And in this country, though there is any¬thing but a pause, one feels the antici¬patory bustle of the approaching accouchement rather than the happy certainty of an actual delivery. Only the hard pressed newspaper critic and that indefatigable enthusiast who composes the eulogies on "jackets" any longer believe in THE American novel. Nevertheless we await with more than usual eagerness those American novels which will fully jus¬tify the present wide interest in the art of fiction. America is undoubtedly waiting to be "done"—adequately, and a considerable number of excellent experiments attest the fact that the writers are either already here or will shortly appear, who will do the big fields descriptively, analytically and synthetically with all the up-to-date technique (including Freud) and with something better than "promise." They will find, indeed, that much ex¬ploratory work has already been ac¬complished unobtrusively by their elders, though most may seem to de¬mand redoing, as it should in every generation. And they will also find (which their elders did not) that the subject is in a serious mood, willing, nay anxious to be "done." The Amer¬ican public is now ready and able to take an objectively cool and interested attitude toward the reactions which it creates in the artist and his result¬ant picture. That will be immensely helpful to the worker, for in this deli¬cate undertaking there must always be a close cooperation between the ar¬tist and the sitter. America is ready— or nearly ready—for a reappraise¬ment and a restatement of herself. . . . Although this seems to speak en¬couragingly for an interesting and valid accomplishment before the younger American novelists, freed and equipped as I have tried to sug¬gest in the foregoing paragraphs by the progress of the art through the last generation, yet it by no means prophe¬sies confidently the coming at once of great novels or great novelists. For these depend, I take it, upon certain elements which in our ordinary dis¬cussions we are only too apt to ignore. One is upon the spiritual depth of the soil to be worked. If Main Street is to date a fair report upon the intelligence and the emotional depth of these United States, by and large (which I believe it is), then even the greatest craftsman will have to wait for his full harvest. One does not make en¬during brick from that straw! But in the tremulous gropings of our fast changing time he may not have to wait long. . . . As for the great novel¬ist himself, it is well to remember that craftsmanship, method and manner and material too, are but the super¬ficies of a great art. The inner, and the incalculable factor is the quality of the individual spirit—the soul (if I may be permitted to lapse into the vocabulary of my ancestors). Even with the novel I think we should be more interested in that, more con¬cerned with that, than we are with the matter of the tools employed. We shall never be content with simply having our work "done," no matter how faithfully, nor how dexterously the artists wield their tools. What we are waiting for is a new world to be revealed to us out of the disguise of the familiar and the worn through the spirit of some one who sees deeper and farther and more understandingly than we do, into whose vision we can resign ourselves confidently, as the re¬ligious convert resigns himself upon the bosom of authority and there finds the desired relief and freedom. Frankly I do not see upon the horizon of my today any evidence of such a comprehending creator, fit to reveal the new secrets of this tumultuous scene, and to impose his own authori¬tative, indubitable sense of its life. (Now that the. great Anatole, alas, is gathering the last threads of his long and finely woven skein!) When that larger personality arrives it will mike little difference what his method may be or his material or where he starts, whether in Gopher Prairie or New York, because he will steadily and surely respin the whole of our uni¬verse from whatever accidental frag¬ments he may happen upon, and will consistently people it out of the secret stores of his own life. For we must not forget that men and women, however much at times they may seem to ignore or even repu¬diate the fact, are more interested in the inner truth buried somewhere within their souls, than with all the outer adjustments and mechanics of their lives—and the two are only inci¬dentally related.